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Atheism, as defined by the entry in Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie is "the opinion of those who deny the existence of a God in the world. The simple ignorance of God doesn't constitute ''atheism''. To be charged with the odious title of ''atheism'' one must have the notion of God and reject it."〔Claude Yvon and Jean-Henri-Samuel Formey, "Atheisme," in ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers'', ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D'Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Projet (Winter 2008 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.〕 In the period of the Enlightenment, avowed and open atheism was made possible by the advance of religious toleration, but was also far from encouraged. Accusations of atheism were common, but most of the people suspected by their peers of atheism were not actually atheist. D'Holbach and Denis Diderot seem to be two of the very small number of publicly identified atheists in Europe during this period. Thomas Hobbes was widely viewed as an atheist for his materialist interpretation of scripture—Henry Hammond, a former friend, described him in a letter as a "Christian Atheist."〔Richard Tuck, "The 'Christian Atheism' of Thomas Hobbes," in ''Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment'', ed. Michael Hunter and David Wooton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111.〕 David Hume was accused of atheism for his writings on the "natural history of religion";〔(Hume on Religion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) )〕 Pierre Bayle was accused of atheism for defending the possibility of an ethical atheist society in his ''Critical Dictionary''; and Baruch Spinoza was frequently regarded as an atheist for his "pantheism." However, all three of these figures defended themselves against such accusations. ==Rise of toleration== In the Reformation and Counter-Reformation eras, Europe was a "persecuting society," which did not tolerate religious minorities or atheism.〔Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, "Toleration in Enlightenment and Europe," in ''Toleration in Enlightenment Europe'', ed. Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1.〕 Even in France, where the Edict of Nantes had been issued in 1598, then revoked in 1685, there was very little support for religious toleration at the beginning of the eighteenth century.〔Marisa Linton, "Citizenship and Religious Toleration in France," in ''Toleration in Enlightenment Europe'', ed. Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 157.〕 States were concerned with maintaining religious uniformity for two reasons: first, they believed that their chosen confession was the way to God and other religions were heretical, and second, religious unity was necessary for social and political stability.〔Linton, 157-8.〕 The advancement of toleration was the result of pragmatic political motives as well as the principles espoused by Enlightenment ''philosophes''. Religion was a central topic of conversation during much of the eighteenth century. It was the subject of debate in the coffeehouses and debate societies of Enlightenment Europe, and a bone of contention among the ''philosophes''. Michael J. Buckley describes the rise of toleration, and of atheism itself, as a response to religious violence in the preceding years: the expulsion of the Huguenots from France, the Spanish inquisition, the witch trials, the civil wars of England, Scotland and the Netherlands. Buckley argues that "religious warfare had irrevocably discredited confessional primacy in the growing secularized sensitivity of much of European culture."〔Michael J. Buckley, ''At the Origins of Modern Atheism'' (London: Yale University Press, 1987), 39.〕 This is a view echoed by Ole Peter Brell and Ray Porter. Marisa Linton, however, points out that it was a common conception that religious diversity would lead to unrest and possibly civil war.〔Linton, 158.〕 According to Justin Champion, the question in England was not one of determining religious truth, whether or not there was a god, but rather one of understanding how the priesthood had gained the power to determine what was accepted as truth.〔Justin Champion, ''The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 7.〕 Republican radicals like Henry Stubbe, Charles Blount and John Toland understood religion as a social and cultural institution, rather than as transcendent principles.〔Champion (1992), 134.〕 They were primarily motivated by priestly fraud or "priestcraft." The second half of Thomas Hobbes' book Leviathan contains an example of this sort of anticlerical thought. Hobbes, like Toland and other anticlerical writers of the period, understood religion in terms of history. By viewing religious truth and the church as separate, they helped open the way for further religious dissent. Because France was an absolutist monarchy in which the king was seen as ruling by divine right, it was generally thought that French people had to share his religious views. The Edict of Nantes, which granted toleration to the Huguenot minority in France, was revoked in 1685. Marisa Linton argues that while the ''philosophes'' did contribute to some extent to the rise of French toleration, the activities of French Huguenots also played a part: they began to worship more publicly in the more remote regions of France, and their continued loyalty to the French crown on the eve of and during the Seven Years' War may have helped to ease the monarch's suspicions about their faith.〔Linton, 169〕 In the mid-eighteenth century, Jansenist intellectuals began campaigning for religious toleration for Calvinists.〔Linton, 170.〕 Linton argues that together, these causes shifted public opinion towards religious toleration.〔Linton, 172.〕 Religious toleration was not accepted by everyone; for instance, Abbé Houtteville condemned the rise of toleration in France because it weakened ecclesiastical authority and encouraged irreligion.〔Jonathan I. Israel, ''Locke, Spinoza and the Philosophical Debate Concerning Toleration in the Early Enlightenment'' (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1999), 6〕 However, in 1787 Louis XVI granted an Edict of Toleration acknowledging their civil rights to marry and own property, although they were still denied the official right to worship and could not hold public office or become teachers.〔 Full religious toleration for Protestants would not be granted until the French Revolution. Toleration itself boiled down to two different factions. The "acceptable face" of toleration was essentially the mainstream view, the freedom of worship and peaceful coexistence of different churches. This view was supported by Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume, as the public face of the Enlightenment. The Radical Enlightenment, on the other hand, was the view of toleration where the radicals demanded freedom of thought and expression, rather than existing peacefully among each other. This movement was shaped by the lesser-known figures of d'Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet, and, in particular, Spinoza, who provided the heart and soul of this faction. Where reason reigned supreme for the radicals, the moderate thinkers maintained that reason must be limited by faith and tradition. Together, the two different views of Enlightenment forged powerfully contrasting notions of toleration. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Atheism in the Age of the Enlightenment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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